


How Do You Feel About California?

by orphan_account, WayFish



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Homelessness, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of sex work, Nesting, california dreams - Freeform, mentions of physical abuse, uhauling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/WayFish/pseuds/WayFish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You could just... be my houseboy, go to the beach and lounge on things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Do You Feel About California?

Bob slipped his key into the lock. And for the first time it struck him how funny it was.

His father had worked third shift on a mining crew. While his mother had worked days as a nurse. And the whole of his childhood he’d watched them do this same dance; always tired and stealing the sparse hours between work and sleep just to be together. That was probably why it felt so comfortable, shuffling quiet as he could into the apartment. But Bob didn’t really want to think about that. Not just now.

He closed the door and locked it. Set down his bag and stripped off his coat, laid it carefully over the chair at the breakfast table and let out a long sigh. This trip had been longer than the others. 

The apartment was smaller than the hotel room they put him up in. But still, it was a nice room; bright in the morning with it’s east facing windows. Or would have been. Except Nate worked as the night manager at a hotel in Manhattan and kept the heavy curtains drawn so he could sleep during the day.

Bob toed off his shoes.

They’d actually met at Nate’s hotel. He’d just been a barback, then. Bob had gone into the hotel restaurant with the hopes of working over a few patrons, earning himself a room for the night or at least a some free drinks. But Nate, bless him, was good at his job. He’d spotted Bob and his knockoff suite and forced swagger the second he walked through the door.

Even in the mostly dark Bob moved through the apartment easily, shedding his shirt and tie and slacks, hanging them carefully in the closet beside Nate's work uniforms.

Nate hadn't called the cops or chased him out. Though he could have. Instead he’d snagged him by the elbow and lead him back to the kitchen. Had the staff make him a cup of coffee and a goddamned sandwich. When Bob asked him why, he’d just smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Because I... I've been there. And everyone could use a cup of coffee sometimes.”

Bob had lost the job at Brown Brothers Harriman that day. Not fired, per-se. But-- well  --Mr. Harriman had grown tired of keeping him. And he’d had no idea where he was going to go. He couldn't have afforded so much as that cup of coffee then and--

That cup of coffee had meant everything, then.

It was warm in the tiny room, with the curtains drawn. Nate was sprawled across the bed in just his shorts, legs tangled up in the covers, messy blond curls falling across his sleeping face. 

Nate slicked his hair back for work most days. His shirts were always impeccably white. And he was striking in the deep maroon jacket that the hotel dress code mandated he wear every day. But Bob liked him more this way, tousled and at ease because no one was looking.

Bob climbed into bed beside him, pressing along the curve of his back, fitting his hand over the rise of his hip. And Nate stirred, slowly, easing back against him.

“Bobby...”

The day after that night in the hotel, he’d waited around the employee entrance most of the morning. Blew through a whole pack of cigarettes. Had all that time to get nervous. And when Nate finally emerged he’d awkwardly jumped him, sticking out his hand in greeting and blurting through his best smile. “Can I take you to breakfast? You know, return the favor.” He'd had to turn a few trick to get the money for it but-- “I’m Bobby!” he'd said, fumbling a little. The only person that had ever called him Bobby, before, was his mother. 

And God only knew why Nate said yes.

Though Bob wasn’t really one to question a good thing.

Nate was from Oklahoma, originally. Though you’d never know it from just looking. He had read The Town and The City when he was 17 and moved to New York with nothing but a duffel bag, $20, and a bruise across his ribs from the last beating his father ever gave him.

Bob nuzzled in against his hair. “Hey honey.”

At first he had found it novel that their narratives were so similar. Bob thought maybe it was because Nate knew what it was to re-invent, as he had. And it gave Bob the chance to voice things he’d kept to himself far too long. Like, how hard it had been to drop his accent. The hours he’d spent practicing how to walk and talk and look and smile. To be alluring but also accessible. How to get what you want without looking as though you were trying.

Nate was maybe the only person that Bob was ever completely honest with. Well, maybe not completely. But mostly. And anyway, he knew better now. The streets of New York were littered with carbon copies of the same young men with the same sad stories, learning to go through the same motions. The only thing that set them apart was, perhaps, that they’d found one another and they were making it.

Still mostly asleep, Nate fumbled to take his hand in the dark, threading their fingers together, pulling him closer. “You’re home,” he said.

They threw that word around a lot. Home. And Bob wished it were. But in truth, he lived a few blocks over and a few more up, in a similarly small room, with a similar kitchen and closet and breakfast table with only one chair. And he almost never stayed the whole night in either place. They had talked about it, living together. He wanted to. But he wasn’t really sure how it would work.

“How was your trip?” Nate asked.

It was hard not to think about Peggy then, the way she’d flitted around the office talking about how she and her boyfriend were “looking”; “We’re looking for a place, you know, just looking. Nothing final. But we’re looking.” And all the secretaries had gone gaping and wide eyed because it was just so scandalous.  And Peggy had puffed up and smiled, coy and proud of how rebellious and revolutionary and progressive she must have seemed.

“I got some good news.”

He could picture it, what it would mean for them. But he didn’t like what he saw. There would be absurd meetings with the realtors. They would have to recite well practiced lines, like, “Oh, we’re just old college buddies. And you know, it’s just so much cheaper to get by with a roommate.” They would have to pay out the teeth for a second bedroom, just to keep up appearances. And keep the curtains drawn so the neighbors would never see. And bite their fists and bury their noises in the pillows every time they made love so no one would ever suspect.

Nate stretched a little. “Oh really?” he said, half way through a yawn.

Though it wouldn’t matter in the end. Because someone would suspect. They always did. And New York was a small town. And someone's cousin of a friend of a friend of a friend of someone’s brother would pass that suspicion down to someone that they knew or worked with. And then, well then it would be over.

There was just no way. Not here, anyway. Not in this city.

Bob nipped at the shell of his ear. "How was your week?" 

And even so, it wasn’t the type of life he wanted for them.

He wanted to sleep next to the man he loved.

"Fine. Boring. The usual." 

He wanted to do boring, domestic, everyday things with him.

He wanted to fight and fuck and fold laundry and watch television and dance to the kitchen radio like the people in the ads that he sold.

"What's your good news?"

He wanted Nate to be able to meet Joan, because he knew that they would be fast friends.

He wanted weekend trips to the beach.

He tightened his grip around Nate's waist, splayed his fingers wide and low on his stomach, fingers just slipping beneath the waist of his shorts. "I missed you."

And he wanted to hold his hand on the street.

And Bob didn’t think that was asking for too much.

"Don't." Nate turned in his arms. So they were nose to nose. And even in the dark, his green eyes were wide and bright. "Not until you tell me."

It wasn’t ideal, what they had. But it was better than the alternative. He knew that for most people it didn’t really work this way. He knew that other men, men like them, usually found one another under darkness, out of desperation. But he and Nate, they’d had a slow, covert, but sweet kind of courting. After his year as “Manservant”, and all that that implied, Bob had been grateful for it.

Bob leaned in and kissed him, slow and lazy and pressing a hand along the small of his back to keep him close.

They’d gone for a lot of walks in the park, at first. And worked up to other things. Like movies, at night, when it was dark enough that they could risk bumping knees and accidentally tangling fingers over a bag of popcorn. Then there had been dinners, in restaurants, where they sat stiff and serious like men on a business while quietly discussing Beatles albums and books and childhood homes and would sometimes nudge one another's feet under the table. Bob took Nate to the MET because he just couldn't believe that he had never gone before. They went early in the morning, on a Tuesday, so it was almost as if they were alone. Bob couldn't keep from going on and on about Europe; London, Paris, Rome and Prague. They stole kisses, huddled behind great marble statues of nude Greco-Roman men.  And Nate took him back to his apartment. God, Bob had been so nervous. He was never nervous. And after, they'd laid in bed making stupid promises about how they would go someday, together: London, Paris, Rome, Prague. 

He angled a knee between Nate's thighs. Nate was as tall as Bob, but slight, and soft around the edges. So it was easy for Bob to just roll him over, pinning Nate flat with his weight, threading their fingers together and pressing his hands to the pillows. "I really missed you." Nate let out an indignant yelp and floundered, putting up a mock struggle.

“Bobby, please-"

“What? I did. I do. I hate being away from you so long.”

Nate rolled his eyes. “You hate Detroit.”

After a year together he introduced Nate to Manolo. It was the closest he’d ever get to taking Nate home to meet the his parents. And Manolo was, in many way, just that. He was the first person Bob really met when he came to New York and he was, possibly, the first person to ever do something nice for him. Manolo had plucked him from the floor of a bus station that Bob had called home for almost two months. Everything he knew about hustling and running a good con, Bob had learned from him. And that had worked for a while. Had even been good. But it was losing it's shine.

Bob kissed him, softly now, threading his fingers deep in his hair. “I wasn't in Detroit, this time.”

They’d gone for drinks, the three of them. Nate had been so shy and sweet. And Manolo immediately adored him. At the end of the evening he'd pulled Bob aside and told him he had to call it off. Told him not to pull Nate into his problems. Told him he should cut ties before it got messy, before it would break his heart or before he broke Nate. Because either one was bound to happen, sooner or later.

But he wasn't going to let that happen. Nate was younger than him. Not by alot. Only 25 It hadn't been such a big discrepancy when they first started seeing one another. But Bob would be 30 on his next birthday. And he knew that he needed to settle down. That was the whole point of getting the job at SCDP. It was his last con. And it would be his first real job. So he could have a real life. A life with Nate. 

“Then where were you?

“How do you feel about California?”

"Um..." Nate cocked an eyebrow at him. "How am I supposed to feel about it?"

Bob kissed him. "I'm serious." Soft and earnest, he nosed his way down Nate's chin, and his neck, pressed his lips to his bare chest. "They offered me a place in the west coast office."

He could feel Nate's breath catch. His eyes went wide and glassy. 

"What are you saying?"

"It's a promotion. I'd make more money. And things cost less there..."

"Shit, Bobby."

"So you wouldn't even have to work. You could just... be my houseboy, go to the beach and lounge on things." 

He smacked Bob in the arm. "If this is a joke..."

"I'm dead serious."

And Nate was shaking, now. His breath came gasped and short. He wound his arms around Bob's neck and kissed him quick and soft like a question. "California?"

Bob thought his heart might beat out of his chest.  "California."

"Well, when do we leave?"

**Author's Note:**

> I'm impatient for Mad Men to start.


End file.
